Drug Lord: The Book

"The drug smuggling business goes on, the slaughtered dead pile up, the U.S. agencies continue to ratchet up their budgets, the prisons grow larger and all the real rules of the game are in this book, some kind of masterpiece." -- Charles Bowden

Category: Breaking News

A series of banners hung this week point to yet another split within the Los Zetas cartel and more violence as a result.

As Breitbart Texas has reported, for more than one year, two rival factions of the Los Zetas cartel have been fighting for control of key drug trafficking territories. The violence between the Los Zetas factions called Cartel Del Noreste and Grupo Bravo/Zetas Vieja Escuela has spread terror in this city as shootouts, kidnappings and gory executions have become an almost daily occurrence. The fighting has since spread from the state of Tamaulipas into Nuevo Laredo and Coahuila.

As a result of the fighting, Los Zetas Vieja Escuela recently met in Matamoros to work out a partnership with their former allies in the Gulf Cartel, Breitbart Texas reported. In exchange for using the Gulf Cartel routes, Los Zetas Vieja Escuela would share funds, weapons and manpower.

Most recently, cartel gunmen from Grupo Bravo hung a series of banners throughout Ciudad Victoria announcing an internal split within the cartel faction. The gunmen who hang the banner are now calling themselves Grupo de la O, or the O Group. Mexican law enforcement sources consulted by Breitbart Texas revealed that the name is a reference to jailed Gulf Cartel boss and Los Zetas founder Osiel Cardenas Guillen.

Mexican intelligence sources in Mexico revealed that the Grupo de la O is based out of Matamoros and appears to be made up of relatives of the Cardenas family as well as the Gulf Cartel cells called Cobra, Satan, Puma and Chuta. “Old Cobras” is the nickname used within the Gulf Cartel to refer to each of the original members of the Los Zetas during the time when the two were allies.

The new player fighting for Ciudad Victoria adds another layer to the already bloody fight for the city. Almost every day, citizen journalists or authorities have reported new shootings, gun battles or gruesome executions as the cartel members fight for control.

(BREITBART) — MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — A leaked video obtained by the Breitbart Texas shows a crew of Gulf Cartel gunmen preparing to incinerate dozens of murdered victims. They are also seen playing soccer with a human head.

The incineration of victims is a long standing practice that allows the criminal organization to avoid scrutiny as well as help Mexican government officials continue to claim low crime statistics.

In the leaked video, a man holding a cell phone claims to be part of the Gulf Cartel and that the group is cooking “rats” or rivals members. The man appears to be holding a beer on the other hand as he narrates in Spanish the fate of their rivals.

In the background of the video, various other cartel members can be seen punching holes in 55-gallon drums and placing rocks and body parts inside. One of the men then asks for a “spark” referring to a lighter. The man with the cell phone then begins to kick the head of one of a murder victim as if it were a soccer ball. Another is heard stating that in a village, Los Zetas members had played soccer with the severed heads of children.

The date and the location of the video remains unknown, however the method of incinerating the victims remains the same throughout Mexico. “Cooking” is a term used to describe the incineration of bodies by cartel members. The murdered victims are hacked into pieces and placed either in clandestine crematoriums or in 55-gallon drums where they are set on fire. The practice of cooking victims not only helps cartels minimize scrutiny but also helps Mexican officials claim that crime continues to decrease since incinerated victims are not counted as murders. According to Mexican officials, without a body, it remains a missing persons case.

Mexican authorities have arrested the former mayor of a rural community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the kidnapping, murder and incineration of hundreds of victims through a network of ovens at the hands of the Los Zetas cartel. The arrest comes after Breitbart Texas exposed not only the horrors of the mass extermination, but also the cover-up and complicity of the Mexican government.

On Thursday morning, Coahuila state authorities arrested Sergio Alonzo Rodriguez, the former mayor of Allende, Coahuila, on the charge of aggravated kidnapping, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Coahuila government revealed. Rodriguez was the mayor of Allende, Coahuila in March, 2011, when a commando of Los Zetas kidnapped dozens of people who were then murdered and incinerated.

Earlier this year, Breitbart Texas published the results of a three-month investigation into how Los Zetas were able to kidnap, torture, execute and incinerate approximately 300 victims–including women and children–between 2011 and 2013. Approximately 150 of the victims were taken to the Piedras Negras state prison where cartel members used 55-gallon drums to incinerate the human remains.

(THE GUARDIAN) — It was still dark when four men boarded the packed commuter bus heading for Mexico City and ordered the passengers to hand over their valuables.

They gathered up mobile phones and wallets, but as they prepared to leave near the town of Toluca, one passenger stood up, drew a pistol and shot the four assailants, killing their leader instantly.

The three injured robbers stumbled off the bus, but the gunman followed them out and shot them dead at the roadside. Then he returned to the bus, handed back the passengers’ belongings and disappeared into the darkness.

Police in Mexico state, which wraps round the country’s capital like a horseshoe, have deployed hundreds of officers in search of the so-called justiciero – or avenger.

But many Mexicans – fed up with crime, corruption and impunity – took to social media to praise the unidentified killer. None of the bus passengers have offered information to police, saying it was too dark to see him clearly.

The case is just the latest of a spate of vigilante killings in Mexico: in southern Tabasco state a taxi driver shot dead two assailants trying to rob him. In the western state of Guanajuato, a witness to the armed robbery of a seafood delivery driver followed and shot at the two suspects fleeing on a motorcycle, injuring one of them, according to local media.

Gema Santamaría, a sociologist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said that while the country has long been plagued by lynchings of supposed criminals, individual vigilante murders are a relatively new development.

After spate of killings, Mexico City is criticized for failing to admit extent of crime problem
Read more

“Public approval of the justiciero has to do with the deep discontent over how the justice system and security services work in Mexico,” she said

BREITBART) — REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Cartel gunmen riding in armored SUVs ambushed a state police convoy killing one of the officers and sparking a series of chases and gun battles over a period of hours.

The ambush against the state police officers comes after citizen journalists in the border region known as the Ribereña or riverine have reported on gun battles involving large convoys of gunmen. According to residents, the gun battles among cartel factions started early morning in the area immediately south of Roma, Texas and quickly spread to other rural communities. The Ribereña is immediately south of Starr County, Texas and is considered a major drug trafficking route due to the lack of border security in the area.

Law enforcement sources consulted by Breitbart Texas revealed that the ambush took place about four hours after the initial gun battles in the Rancherias rural community near the city of Camargo, which is immediately south of Rio Grande City, Texas. A convoy of armored cartel trucks attacked police forces, setting off a fierce gun battle where one of the officers died. At the end of the clash, two cartel vehicles were left behind. One of the vehicles was a standard SUV, while the other truck was armored. Both vehicles had extensive damage from collisions and gunshots.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – In barely four years, a little-known criminal gang has grown to challenge the world’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, for domination of the Mexican underworld, unleashing a new tide of violence.

Once minions of Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel, traffickers of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) have turned on their former masters, seizing territory and buying off thousands of corrupt police.

Led by former policeman Nemesio Oseguera, aka “El Mencho”, the gang soon carved out an empire at the expense of weaker rivals.

The speed of its ascent shows how quickly power can shift in Mexico’s multi-billion-dollar drugs trade.

Juggling interests from China to North Africa and eastern Europe, the CJNG’s bloody advance has pushed murders to their highest levels under President Enrique Pena Nieto, who vowed to restore law and order when he took office in late 2012.

All but four in a 2009 list of Mexico’s 37 most wanted capos are now dead or in jail, and Pena Nieto did initially succeed in reducing violence.

But a resurgence that led to 3,800 murders between July and August highlights the government’s failure to beat down cartels without new ones springing up in their place.

Pena Nieto recently sought to allay security concerns by announcing a plan to step up crime prevention in the worst-hit areas. He did not set out the details of his plan, but urged states to speed up efforts to put local police under unified statewide command.

(BREITBART) — The resources of Mexican transnational criminal organizations, also known as cartels, will be seized and used to fund Donald Trump’s border wall if he wins the 2016 presidential election. The wall, which several previously high-trafficked areas of the U.S.-Mexico border already have–whether an actual wall or a several tiered fencing and integrated technological system–has been a controversial issue to pundits and politicians who lack information on the subject.

Trump’s idea to force the cartels to pay will likely manifest in the form of seizing their assets. It is likely that the U.S. State Department’s diplomatic shackles placed upon the FBI will be removed, as it is common knowledge that the State Department pressures the FBI to balance their law enforcement priorities with diplomatic concerns–a restriction that makes it difficult to properly address Mexican cartels when many of the elected leaders in Mexico are actually surrogates for those very cartels, as Breitbart Texas has reported ad nauseam.

Trump’s plan, as stated as early as March 2016, never included a wall on all 1,954 miles of land border. Trump committed to give the actual Border Patrol agents who patrol each of the nine sectors on the southwest border a seat at the policy table and to listen to where a wall is needed and where one is unneeded–a fact most pundits and journalists seemingly missed as they mistakenly discuss his allegedly changing positions on the matter.

The news first broke on Lifezette; however, the focus on cartels was downplayed in their coverage as an idea that is being “mulled over.” Trump’s campaign is now led by Stephen Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News who stepped down temporarily to run the campaign. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project began under Bannon’s leadership and the issue is dear to his heart. The project allows clandestine citizen journalists in several Mexican states that are under direct control from Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel to have a platform to expose the evils of the transnational criminal groups and has a stated goal of warring with the criminals and exposing them for the purpose of ending them.